Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to information processing apparatuses that perform short-range wireless communication, control methods thereof, and storage media.
Description of the Related Art
In recent years, more and more information processing apparatuses having a function of short-range wireless communication such as Bluetooth® communication, including medical apparatuses, domestic appliances, office automation equipment, and the like, conform to the Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) standard. The BLE is one extension specification of the Bluetooth standards. For example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2014-120173 discloses a system in which an information processing apparatus uses BLE to provide a service to a mobile terminal.
In a system in which a mobile terminal uses a service of an information processing apparatus such as the system disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2014-120173, the mobile terminal often finds the information processing apparatus by BLE communication and makes a connection request to the found information processing apparatus. In these cases, the information processing apparatus serves as an advertiser and transmits an advertisement packet conforming to the BLE standard. The information processing apparatus can notify a mobile terminal, which is present therearound, that the information processing apparatus can provide a service, by including information for specifying the service in the advertisement packet and transmitting this packet, for example.
In the case where the mobile terminal uses the service provided by the information processing apparatus that is the transmission source of the advertisement packet, the mobile terminal needs to establish a wireless connection (BLE connection) for BLE communication with this information processing apparatus. In this case, the mobile terminal serves as an initiator and transmits a connection request (CONNECT_REQ) for BLE communication to the information processing apparatus, and can thereby establish a BLE connection and use the service of the information processing apparatus via the established BLE connection. Thus, in the case where the information processing apparatus provides a service to the mobile terminal that is present therearound, a situation is assumed where a plurality of users use their mobile terminals and simultaneously use the service of the information processing apparatus.
However, in a procedure in which a mobile terminal serves as an initiator and establishes a BLE connection as mentioned above, the following problem may occur. Upon a BLE connection being established between a mobile terminal and an information processing apparatus with the aforementioned procedure, communication via the BLE connection is performed while the mobile terminal, which is the initiator, serves as a master and the information processing apparatus, which is an advertiser, serves as a slave. The BLE standard, which is based on the Bluetooth standard, employs a connection mode in which a plurality of slaves can be connected to a single master, and therefore, each slave can only establish a BLE connection with the single master. That is to say, in the case where the information processing apparatus serves as a slave as mentioned above, the information processing apparatus can only establish a BLE connection with a single mobile terminal, and cannot simultaneously establish BLE connections with a plurality of mobile terminals. In this case, the information processing apparatus cannot simultaneously provide a service to a plurality of mobile terminals (mobile terminal devices) using BLE communication (short-range wireless communication).